The following relates generally to the medical monitoring arts, medical warning systems concerning a monitored patient, and so forth.
Hospitals, nursing homes, and other medical facilities commonly use an early warning scoring (EWS) system designed to provide predictive information as to whether a given patient is likely to require emergency care, such as being admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) or cardiac care unit (CCU). By way of illustration, one known EWS system known as the Modified Early Warning System (MEWS) computes a score based on physiological parameters including: blood pressure; heart rate; respiration rate; patient temperature; and level of consciousness (for example, quantified using the AVPU scale). In MEWS, each of these physiological parameters has a normal range with score zero, and the score component for the physiological parameter increases as the value moves further out of the normal range. By way of illustration, a heart rate in the normal range of 51-100 beats per minute (BPM) scores zero, while a rate of between 41-50 or 101-110 BMP scores 1, a rate of less than 40 or between 111-129 BPM scores 2, and a rate of greater than 130 BPM scores 3. The AVPU scores 0 for “alert,” 1 for “voice response,” 2 for “pain response,” and 3 for “unresponsive.” The scores for the physiological parameters are totaled, and a score greater than a threshold, e.g. 5, is considered an action trigger (for example, triggering an emergency medical team call, triggering transfer to ICU or CCU, et cetera).
Conventionally, EWS systems have been paper-based systems. For example, the nurse suitably fills in parameter scores on a printed table, and adds the values together to produce the EWS score.